


One Defining Moment

by Brumeier



Series: As Seen On TV [10]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - X-Files Fusion, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Partnership, Pre-Slash, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-16 01:02:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18510727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier
Summary: During some downtime between cases, John builds paper airplanes and Rodney ponders the mystery that is John.





	One Defining Moment

**Author's Note:**

> Crossover Coffeeshop prompts: John Sheppard, Buffy Summers, The X-Files, first scar
> 
> TV Fusion: The X-Files

“Is that really necessary?” Rodney snapped at his partner as another paper airplane sailed past his head.

“Probably not,” John replied, already folding the next piece of printer paper.

Rodney supposed it was better than throwing sharpened pencils up at the ceiling tile, which bristled over John’s head like a yellow Number 2 porcupine. John didn’t handle the downtime between cases very well. He wanted to be out there, looking for answers, trying to know the unknowable.

Rodney was just as happy to be safely behind his desk, catching up with all the paperwork each case generated. 

He picked up one of the paper airplanes and unfolded it, scribbling a long and hopefully complex math equation across the folds. He reassembled it and sent it sailing back across the small basement room that served as their office.

“Why don’t you work on that for a while.”

That should buy Rodney a few moments of peace and quiet. The trick, he’d learned over the last few months, was to keep John’s mind engaged before he descended too far into juvenile shenanigans. 

While John kicked his feet up on the desk and studied the equation, Rodney got back to his report. He had to be very careful with how he worded things, because AD Caldwell would go through it with a fine-toothed comb. He’d been the one to assign Rodney as John’s partner, though spy would have been a more accurate term. The powers that be were embarrassed by John, and the weirdo cases he chose to investigate. 

Rodney surreptitiously studied John, fingers still moving across the keyboard. When they’d met on Rodney’s first day, it hadn’t gone well. Spooky Sheppard, as the other agents called him behind his back, had been less than thrilled to gain a partner and had immediately guessed at Rodney’s purpose. The man was crazy smart, not genius levels like Rodney but pretty close, and he was an excellent investigator. His methods, though, and his total disregard for protocol could be infuriating. And sometimes dangerous.

“Are you sure this is supposed to be a three?” John asked, turning the paper around and tapping at a section of the equation.

“Yes. You haven’t solved it yet? I thought you were smarter than that.”

John’s eyes narrowed and he got back to it, tongue poking out just a little. He was ridiculously attractive; Rodney had noticed that the first day too. Lean but powerful, with a head full of cowlicks that should’ve made him look like a little kid but instead gave him a rakish air. Rodney knew there were agents interested in John, despite his reputation, but he’d never known the man to date. 

Rodney was so lost in thought he didn’t see the airplane that came gliding his way until it bounced off his shoulder.

“Hey!”

“Solved it. You need to think of something harder.” John leaned back in his chair, feet still up on the desk, and contemplated the pencils stuck in the ceiling. Behind him was a poster, a picture of a so-called UFO that said, in bold letters, I WANT TO BELIEVE. 

Everything John was, was wrapped up in that poster.

Rodney was a profiler. He was well aware how one defining moment could change a person’s life, could leave a scar on their psyche that never went away. That was certainly the case with John, who’d lost his mother when he was only eleven years old. She vanished one day, never to be seen or heard from again. Patrick Sheppard, John’s father, had been certain she’d been kidnapped. But when there was no ransom demand, and no body ever turned up, he changed his tune to abandonment by a thankless, probably cheating, spouse. Rodney had read the case file.

John’s story had never wavered. He said his mother had been abducted. By aliens. That he’d witnessed the whole thing: the sickly green light, the feeling of paralysis, his mother floating out the window. It had caused a rift between him and the rest of his family, particularly his father. That one defining moment in John’s life had propelled him on a lifetime of seeking answers, of tracking down not only UFO stories but any stories of a supernatural bent. 

He’d never stopped searching for his mother. Never stopped trying to get over that first, deep scar that had come to define him.

Rodney was more skeptical, especially about extraterrestrials, but even he couldn’t deny the mounting evidence that there was another world that existed out there alongside their own. He’d seen too much since working with John to think otherwise. But sometimes – most times – there was a logical explanation for the phenomenon they witnessed, and Rodney did his best to make sure John could still recognize that when he saw it.

At some point in the last few months they’d become more than partners. They were friends. And Rodney did his best to shield John from the higher-ups who wanted to tear him down.

Being partnered up with John might well turn out to be the defining moment of Rodney’s life.

John’s computer dinged and he righted himself in his chair. “Hey. I think we’ve got something.”

“If it’s another trek through Idaho looking for Sasquatch, the answer is emphatically no.”

“Even better. A girl with superhuman powers.”

They’d done a couple investigations along those lines in the past. The so-called powers had just been a case of pumped-up human biology, which was rare but certainly not otherworldly. Of course, John would say there was alien gene-splicing at work to create a race of super powered alien-human hybrids.

“There’s a video. Check it out.”

Rodney walked across the room and leaned over John’s shoulder. It was a quick clip with really bad lighting that showed a teenaged girl ripping a door off its hinges. There was no context at all.

“Could be an adrenaline thing.”

“Maybe. But she lives in an area that’s kind of a hotspot for strange activity. I’ve been meaning to get out there and take a look around. What do you say, McKay?”

“If it gets you to stop throwing paper airplanes at me, I’m all for it. Where are we going?”

“Sunnydale, California. Better pack your sunblock.”

By the gleam in John’s eyes, Rodney was certain sunblock would be the least of his concerns. Still, one unusually strong teenager? How bad could it be?


End file.
